Is my greatest need the thing I least want?

My greatest need is the thing I least want

This statement is true is it not?  It explains why the good news of the offer of new life in Christ is the very thing I am so reluctant to accept.

 Let me expand:  “my heart is restless until it finds its rest in God” (to paraphrase Augustine).  God has put “eternity in my heart” (Eccl 3:11).   

 If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.   (The Timeless Writings of C.S. Lewis: The Pilgrim’s Regress, Christian Reflections, & God in the Dock)

 But, following in the line of Adam, I would rather determine my own destiny, live my life my way, without reference to God, as the master of my own fate.

 I am a dissatisfied soul who refuses to seek the only true solace:

• I am restless.  Jesus says: “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest.” (Matt 11:28);
• I full of guilt.  Jesus says “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” (Matt 11:29-30)
• I want life.  Jesus says “I have come that you might have life and life to the full” (John 10:10).  It is as Jesus said to the Pharisees in his day:  You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.  But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. (John 5:39-40)

 If it is true for non-Christians that their greatest need is the thing which they least want, this is also true for my experience as a believer.  This is the conundrum of why I know the good but don’t do it.  I am living contradiction. 

  I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one who wills to do good .  For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God — through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 7:21-25)

 Dick Lucas once said in a sermon: ‘The pew cannot control the pulpit.  We cannot deliver “demand led” preaching because no one demands the Gospel’.  These are profoundly pertinent words.

 Of course there is a demand-led kind of preaching, but it won’t do your soul any good The same was true in Paul’s day.  For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers. 2 Tim 4:3.

 So, it would seem to me there are two prayers which Gospel minded people might want to pray:

1. Lord, so immerse me in your word that I think your thoughts and know your mind.  May your agenda, your message, your life-giving Gospel be what emanates from my lips, not the wants and desires of a restless entertainment oriented audience.
2. Lord, help me to want what I most need.  Change my desires so that the attractiveness of the glory of God is my greatest desire, and incite a holy appetite for you in my deepest being.

 Perhaps, with these thoughts in mind, my greatest desires will end up matching my greatest needs, and I will want what a need most.

Preachers should let the bible do the talking!

Preachers should let the bible do the talking!

 As I write this blog I am sitting in front of the TV watching the European Team Championships in Leiria Portugal.  Some good performances by Brits, particularly the 4 x 400metre relay team, and Wayne Chambers, of course.

 At the end of a busy 6 days in Wycliffe, I do feel a bit like I have come to the end of a marathon.  But isn’t Christian ministry supposed to be exhausting and energy expending?  It requires discipline, self control and a focus on the end game:  Every athlete exercises self-control in all things. They do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable. (1 Cor 9:25)

 But there is also the caution that success will only be awarded to those who do God’s work in God’s way: An athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules. (2 Tim 2:5).

 This blog is not intended to be purely about preaching.  But, as I reflect on the last 6 days, it has renewed my conviction that the hope for the future of the Church lies in its preachers.

 Monday to Friday this week the students received a sermon from Vaughan Roberts of St Ebbe’s Oxford on Daniel 6.  I preached on James 4 and gave them a lecture on the Nooma teacher Rob Bell and considered the power of ancient rhetoric.  Archie Coates of Holy Trinity Brompton preached on the subject of ‘joy’ from Philippians 4 and we had two full days of teaching from Greg Haslam of Westminster Chapel which were under girded by his conviction that faithful expository preaching should be carried out with a sense of expectation that God will act when his word is preached, and we should look for divine activity from the Holy Spirit in bible-preaching churches.

 On Saturday 20^th June we had the inaugural conference of the Wycliffe School of Preaching, with Greg as well as seminars from Wycliffe Tutors, Michael Green, Justin Hardin and Peter Walker.  About 40 delegates from the Oxfordshire area came for a stimulating and challenging day on the subject of Evangelistic Preaching.

 Too much happened over these last 6 days to attempt to summarise them in a blog.

However these three convictions were reinforced for me:

 Preachers must let the bible speak

 Healthy congregations do not gather primarily to see the preacher display his oratory or rhetoric.  For sure, Paul warned that a time would come men and women would gather around them preachers who would titillate their itching ears, giving soothing and comforting words.  But this will do congregations no good.

 In this passage in 2 Tim 4 there is a warning to congregations.  But there is also a warning to preachers:  have we heard from God in his word before we dare to stand before the congregation?  This requires patient, careful listening to the Bible in all its fullness.

Who is this who darkens counsel by words without knowledge?  Now prepare yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer Me.  (Job 38:2-3)

 Job was castigated because he seemed to assume that he knew more than God and could presume to tell God how he should act.  Preachers must not be guilty of this sin.

 Preachers must let the bible loose

 Apologetics is a key part of Pauline preaching and an important part of our preaching training.  We should be able to give compelling reasons for the hope that we have (1 Peter 3:15).  However, the preacher’s job is not to defend the bible but to preach the bible

 Spurgeon’s comment on this matter is well known.  “Scripture is like a lion. Whoever heard of defending a lion? Just turn it loose; it will defend itself.”

 I have learnt so much from Dick Lucas’ preaching over the years.  Most significant for me was the way in which Dick would preach a passage in such a way that whenever I came to read that passage again I understood what it meant and means.

 Yes, it is good to learn how to speak articulately, to formulate messages memorably and illustrate and apply the message engagingly (see blog “Make a House a Home” below).  All this is needed.  But the central task in all this is to “let the bible loose” so that people are confronted by the living God through his living word.  It takes time and self-deflecting effort to ensure that the preacher does not stand as a mediator between the living God and God’s people.  His job is to let God do his work through his word.

 Preachers must let the bible convert

 By this I don’t just mean the first challenge of coming to faith.  I also mean that the bible should ongoingly be converting attitudes, emotions and outlooks.  The bible should be confronting and dealing with sin in the life of the preacher and in the life of the congregation.

 At the end of 1 Thessalonians Paul prays:

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  (1 Thess 5:23)

 The context of this prayer is significant:

19 Do not quench the Spirit. 20 Do not despise prophecies. 21 Test all things; hold fast what is good. 22 Abstain from every form of evil.  (1 Thess 5:19-22)

 I take it that to be “sanctified through and through” (NIV) is a work of Word and Spirit.  I also think that J. I. Packer was right when he said, “The only proof of past conversion is present convertedness.  If my preaching is faithfully biblical then over and over again I should be being persuaded by my preaching:  “Yes Lord, if I was hearing this for the first time, I would hungrily grasp it for myself!”

 There is so much more to preaching that these three things, but I am convinced that preaching is not less than letting the bible speak; letting the bible loose; and letting the bible convert and this is a great place to start!

Make a house a home

Make a house a home

 Some thoughts on preaching which hits home

We are preparing to move house again soon (2 miles across the other side of Oxford).  As we prepare for the process of transporting all our possessions from one house to another my thoughts turned to what makes a house a home?  The bare structure and location of a property only becomes home when it feels lived in and starts to reflect the personality of its inhabitants.

The same could be said to be true of preaching.  Many sermons which I listen to show evidence of structure, design and effort.  But they often don’t feel lived in.  They lack the warmth and personality which only comes when the preacher has inhabited the text for themselves and taken it home.

What are some of the errors which sermons make?  You can probably think of more, but these few thoughts came to mind.

Pegs

When you first move into your new house boxes get emptied and mounds of clothing, books etc. await proper ‘filing away’.  Should someone come to visit the chances are their coat will need to be draped over a chair or put on the bed.  Hopefully, in time, pegs will appear upon which you may hang your coat.

In a similar way, many sermons which I hear offer nowhere to ‘hang your hat’ so to speak.  There is content, but it lacks pegs.  Without this attention to structure, the hearer can struggle to navigate their way through the sermon.  Without pegs it is unlikely that hearers will be able remember salient points of the sermon for the week ahead.

Rhetoric gets a bad name today. But the later Greek sophists (Isocrates. Cicero etc.) believed Rhetoric to be the ability to speak with such clarity that the audience would be persuaded.  Philosophers think clearly.  Rhetoricians think clearly out loud.  Preachers should be doing the same.  This will in part be reflected by careful attention to the structure and form of the sermon.

Personality

It takes time for a house to become a home.  Over time the inhabitants will begin to stamp their own personality on their property – hanging curtains, arranging flowers, decorating to taste etc. 

Many sermons I hear lack personality.  Phillip Brooks’ now famous comment that preaching is “communication of truth through personality” is exactly right.  Obviously we don’t want the sermon to be littered with personal anecdotes and stories.  It is not supposed to be a talk about them.  However, congregations listen when they can see that for the preacher the message has hit home personally.

They have been moved by the message they are preaching.  They have made the connections as to how it applies to their own life.

Punch

Sermons which hit home are those which apply pertinently and pointedly to today’s world.  They are illustrated in real life.

Too many sermons I hear leave me only in the world of the text.  Now, of course, this is not the worst problem, there are equally many messages that never take me to the world of the text and only start in the world of today.  I guess the former may be the weakness of evangelical expository preaching; the latter is the weakness of liberal preaching.

John Stott has regularly repeated the need to engage in “double listening” – Hearing the voice of the text; hearing the voice of the world. 

When you move into a new house you are inclined to think: however did they live with that wallpaper?  How come they didn’t modernise the bathroom suite etc.  But of course, it is very difficult to see your environment and culture from the fresh perspective of an outsider. 

As preachers we need to retain the fresh “eyes” of an outsider, someone who has not spent the whole week labouring over the text, and who can see the difficult punchy questions which might need addressing.

At home in the sermon

By this expression I don’t at all mean that preaching should be psychologically therapeutic, only comforting and devotional.  What I think I mean is that I expect preaching to give me pegs (to help me recall and apply the bible to my life in the week ahead); personality (so I feel that the preacher has met with God in his preparation); punch (I see the issue with a freshness and pertinence for the week ahead).

The healthy Counter-balance written into church membership

The healthy Counter-balance written into church membership

I am finishing off the final editing on my book on John’s Gospel entitled: Lives Jesus Changed.

As I arrived at chapter 20 I was struck by Jesus’ pastoral concern for his mother even as he was enduring the agony of a sacrificial death. He placed her in the care of the Apostle John and instituting the future of the caring Christian community we know as the Church.

A consistent theme in John is that the disciples can expect hostility from the world, but safety in Christ:

If you belonged to the world , it would love you as its own. As it is, you do not belong to the world , but I have chosen you out of the world . That is why the world hates you. (John 15:19)

My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one. (John 17:15)

The thought that struck me powerfully this week was this: the thing that puts us at odds with the world (being in Christ and our resultant membership of the Church) is also the very thing that fortifies and strengthens us to live for him. Let me put it like this.

The Church is call to be both:

Counter-cultural – we side with Christ. If the world hated Christ then we can expect it to hate us too. More positively, Christians are not supposed to just “go with the flow” but rather, under God, they are to seek the reform of society by His Spirit, for his glory. You are not of the world, but Jesus has sent us into the world for the world’s better good (e.g. John 17:16-18).

Cross-cultural – the great glory of the Church is that by being united to Christ we are also now in unity with the great diversity of believers across lands, nations, kingdoms and time zones. The community to which we now belong is made up of a vast array of diverse people (see John 12:32 – all peoples (all nations) make up this church).

The thing that has struck me afresh is that these two marvellous truths about the Church (as being counter-cultural and cross-cultural) are a marvellous counter balance to each other. Without the world-wide weight of our membership of a universal church we would be picked off by the enemy, discouraged by loneliness and defeated by our weakness. Similarly, if the Church is not distinctive and separate from the world there is no way in which it will become a movement of people which will begin to change this world for good.

Jesus’ vision for his body, the church, is that the people who have been saved by him out of the world but for the good of the world, should vastly increase the scope and breadth of his ministry and do so much more than he could have done if he had remained a solitary man on this earth.

What a vision for the Church! Will you repent with me of feeling anything less than enamoured by it or anything less than grateful for being a part of God’s weighty purposes on earth?!

Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans launched

UK LAUNCH OF FELLOWSHIP OF CONFESSING ANGLICANS JULY 6, 2009, WESTMINSTER CENTRAL HALL, LONDON

THE launch in the UK and Ireland of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans (FCA), an orthodox Anglican movement for mission at global and local level, is to take place on July 6 in London.

The Fellowship is the outworking of last year’s GAFCON conference in Jerusalem, at which 1200 delegates signed up to the Jerusalem Statement. Those attending Gafcon 2008 represented some 40 million Anglicans world-wide, 70% of the total active membership of 55 million.

The launch event, entitled ‘Be Faithful! – Confessing Anglicans in Global and Local Mission’ will be held at Westminster Central Hall from 10.30am-5.30pm. The aim is to encourage and envision Anglicans who are committed to the orthodox teachings of the Anglican Church and who are passionate about global and local mission.

It will be the first of regular ‘fellowship’ events both in the UK and across the world. Speakers at the July 6 gathering, where around 2,300 bishops, clergy and laity are expected, will include contributors from across the Anglican Communion, including Bishops Keith Ackerman (President of Forward in Faith North America), Wallace Benn (Bishop of Lewes), John Broadhurst (Chairman of Forward in Faith UK) and Michael Nazir-Ali, Dr Chik Kaw Tan plus Archbishop Peter Jensen (secretary of the Fellowship of Confessing Anglicans www.fca.net).

They, and others yet to be announced, will also lead gatherings in London churches on Sunday July 5th. the day before the launch.

Regional meetings, in the run up to the London event will also be held on:- * May 14, St Batholomew’s,Bath

* May 15, Christ Church, Virginia Water

* May 18, Holy Trinity, Platt, Manchester

* May 19, St Andrew’s, Newcastle-under-Lyme

* May 20, Christ Church, Fulwood, Sheffield

The Revd Paul Perkin, vicar of St Mark’s, Battersea Rise, London, and Chairman of the event planning team, said: “The fellowship is just that, a spiritual movement of brothers and sisters across the nation and the world. It is not a separatist party, nor is it an organisation, but a spiritual fellowship issuing from a concern for truth and unity. It is a renewal of our confessing Anglican roots and convictions, and will be forward-looking in gospel mission locally, and in solidarity globally with Anglicans throughout the world, especially those suffering through poverty or discrimination”.

For further information about the event, email befaithfulanglicans@gmail.com, or book on-line here For further information: Revd Paul Perkin, Be Faithful, Event Chairman: 020 7326 9412 Canon Dr Chris Sugden (Anglican Mainstream): 01865 883388

Feeding your soul and weeding out sin

I was preaching on Matthew 5:27-30 today and used an extended illustration of the health of the lawn being analogous to the health of the human heart.

 

I know it is hard to imagine this at the moment but try to think back to the hot summer months in sultry heat (!), enjoying the lushness of the garden, with a gentle hum of electric fly mowers in the background.

 

It can be quite irritating to have the peace and quiet of summer shattered by lawn mowers, but I suspect that many people mow their lawn frequently as a fairly fool proof way of making the garden look nice and well tended.

 

At the heart of the growing season, if you leave your lawn for little more than a week tell-tale signs of its true nature will be revealed.  This is certainly true in my case.  If I fail to mow regularly, the apparently lush, well tended lawn shows its true nature – dandelions begin to sprout yellow and eventually shower umbrella seed replicating themselves all over the lawn.  Big green dock leaves shade the delicate grass.  Untendered weeds spoil what initially appeared to be a lush lawn.

 

You see the problem with only cutting the grass is that it deals superficially with the weeds.  It doesn’t deal with root causes.  Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount tells me that I must not live the Christian life at the level of superficial appearances.  I can fool other people most of the time; I can fool myself some of the time; but I can never fool God

 

There are two more fundamental care issues related to my lawn which need attending to if I am going to have a healthy lawn – they involve feeding the soil and weeding out the roots of the intruder!

 

Feeding your spiritual lawn means tending your heart.  Psalm 119:9-11 this:

How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.  I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands.  I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you. (NIV)

 

Tending to the state of the heart needs to happen in order for the Christian to be healthy and pure and not controlled by lust.

 

Weeding your spiritual lawn requires pulling out sin at its source

Behind adultery lies lust (And behind murder lies anger).  In order to deal with  lust radical action is required – metaphorically gouging out eyes and chopping of wayward hands.  Controlling what we watch and controlling what we do with our hands is necessary for a godly Christian life.  If I make myself blind, deaf, mute and paraplegic, yet retain my soul then I am of greater value than if I have a beautiful body and prefect facilities yet corrupt my soul…

 

As ever, Jesus’ words challenge and provoke.  But a godly life is a healthy life and, moreover is the only way to avoid hell!

 

See www.simonvibert.com for full sermon.

 

 

Why learning to preach might not be so different to learning to play golf

Can you teach preaching?  I am often asked that question.  After all, is not preaching spiritual gifting from God; a spiritual exercise dependent on the Holy Spirit’s enabling?  Older preachers used to speak of divine ‘unction’ to refer to the anointing which God gives when preaching is razor sharp and penetrating the soul.

 

So, can you teach it?  Well, I am banking on some teaching being required, or otherwise I am out of a job as ‘Director of the School of Preaching” at Wycliffe Hall!

 

As I often remind my students, no illustration is perfect and the parameters of the illustration need to be understood.  However, it seems to me that there is some parallel between learning a sport or musical instrument and learning to preach.  After all, we all recognise that Alfred Brendel (who recently gave his last ever piano recital in England) or Tiger Woods are exceptionally gifted.  At the same time, we recognise that their giftedness has only flourished as a result of hard practice and rigorous labour.

 

The Apostle Paul encourages Timothy to: Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved, a workman who does not need to be ashamed and who correctly handles the word of truth. (2 Tim 2:15)

 

When I moved to London about 10 years ago I missed my walking in the beautiful Derbyshire Peak District.  So, I decided that the next best thing was to take up a game that I realise is often called “a good walk spoiled”!  How do you go about learning to play golf?  I wonder, leaving aside the necessary prayerful pleading that comes alongside preaching preparation (although I did try that too with my golf!), whether there are not some parallels in how one learns to preach.

 

Books – before starting out on the course I read quite a number of books.  These were useful for learning what a “Birdie” “Fore” “9 Iron” etc. are.  But there is still quite a big disconnect between what one reads and what one experiences when wielding a club.  Indeed it is possible to play golf without ever reading what others have said about how the game should be played.  And of course the same is true for preaching.

 

Driving Range – Ah, now we are getting somewhere.  Having bought my first second hand pair of golf clubs I was ready to have a crack at hitting a ball.  Despite the slices and mis-fires it felt good to be taking out one’s pent up energy on that little white ball.  And, to my surprise, with a bit of practice, shots went a bit straighter and a bit further.  As a 17 year old, a relatively new Christian, I was grateful for the trust which my Vicar put in me to let me loose on his unsuspecting congregation and to preach my first sermon.  And I certainly know that I, for one, was reasonably edified by the experience!

 

On the Course – the first 9 hole game at a public course.  Well, there were flashes of genius!  But most of the time was spent looking for the miscued ball in the shrub land and the heather.

But at least I was playing and I got through my first complete game.  There is no substitute for preaching in front of a real audience.  Of course, they are not there as your practice ground.  Preaching has to be a real, spiritual experience for it to be preaching at all.  It is more important that preachers are godly and prayerful than they fill their heads reading books.  But of course, it is not either/or.  We learn as we go, and particularly for preachers, the maxim “lifelong learner” should be true.

 

Back to the Driving Range – with an Instructor! – Now I had got serious.  I had the bug.  I found moments of exhilaration in the game, but I was very conscious of my inadequacies.  Hitting the balls down the driving range with an Instructor present was a combination of learning and unlearning.  As well as working on stance and swing, he worked on the range of skills I needed in order to play the whole game.  It is no use rocketing 50 balls 200yard down the driving range and yet be unable to chip it 10 yards or putt it home.  This is where mentoring and modelling comes into the preaching experience.  Peer critique, preaching classes and ongoing feedback from carefully selected critiques really helps this process.

 

A Walking Lesson – best of all have been the couple of lessons I have had in a real game with a golf instructor walking me through it, coaching me as I go. .  Preaching is caught and taught.  I think I learned more from sitting under Dick Lucas’ preaching and listening to Dr Martyn Lloyd Jones’ tapes than anything else.  Hearing gifted people do it inspires me and enthuses me to learn from them and do it better.

 

Play, play, play – when all is said and done, playing the game, again and again, is what makes the golfer good.  Yes everything previously mentioned matters.  But golfers improve by doing it again and again.  I notice this in my preaching.  If I am preaching regularly I preach better.  Perhaps it is because I am forced to spend more time with God as I prepare.  Perhaps it is because there are skills which I hone and use more frequently.  Perhaps it is because I get to know my audience and my material more thoroughly.  But I do know that preachers need to preach in order to preach better.

 

Actually, learning to play golf was not a linear process.  All of these things happened (and continue to happen) at the same time, and all are necessary.  The same is true for the godly skills of preaching.

 

So, can you teach preaching?

 

Well, yes.  But teaching preaching (or rather, learning to preach) is a combination of books, lessons, seminars, preaching classes, peer critique, good modelling, practice, and a humble dependence on God for a life time’s ministry.

 

No teacher of preaching thinks that he can do all that is needed to teach preachers!

You can’t learn it in the classroom; you can’t learn it from books …. But they are necessary starting points.

 

For the above reasons training preachers at a place like Wycliffe Hall is the most integrative of the disciplines: bringing together all biblical and theological knowledge; systematising it and clarifying the material; putting it together in a structured and logical way; allowing the message to form, challenge and sanctify the preacher;  learning together in community; putting it into practice in live settings; being enthused to spend a lifetime developing and honing these skills; and under God, prayerfully allowing him to shape and mould the messenger as much as the message in order that congregations hear God’s voice through them.

 

John the Baptist – facing two directions

The announcement of John the Baptist’s birth is greeted by Zechariah in the words we know as the Benedictus.  The thing that is most striking about this song of praise is the way in which it points in two directions at the same time.  John is the last of the Old Testament prophets, anticipating God’s promised rescue of Israel from the hand of their enemies.

But as we read through Luke 1 it begins to dawn on us that a climactic day has arrived in the birth of John.  Now with John’s coming we shall see that he will prepare the way for one who will finally bring these promises to fruition.  He ‘brings the knowledge of salvation through the forgiveness of sins’ (Luke 1:77).

It is this description of the significance of Christmas which I find striking.  As Jesus is anticipated by John’s ministry we are told: ‘… the rising sun will come to us from heaven to shine on those living in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the path of peace.’

The imagery used here is very dramatic.  In the same way that we can look towards the glow of an emerging sunrise in the east and anticipate all the freshness and opportunity of a new sunny day, so in Jesus Christ, we have a new day dawning which will bring about forgiveness and peace.  The rising of the sun (Son) of God is truly the dawning of a new day.  It is a day which Zechariah got a first glimpse of.   But we have the great privilege of basking in the glory of the Son of God – enjoying his presence and peace.

Christmas Day is a great day – a Son day.  But it anticipates a great rising of the Son of God.  Having died on the cross to buy peace and forgiveness of sin he rose again on the third day.  The rising Son is the same Emmanuel – God with us now.

Happy Christmas!

The Financial Crisis (Part two)

Wycliffe Hall was very fortunate to be able to welcome Lord Brian Griffiths, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs International, to deliver a lecture on a Christian response to the current financial crisis to our students this week.

His perspective on the causes of this crisis are a combination three things:  excessive public borrowing with the ratio of debt to household income now standing at about 150%;  Banks turning into lending shops, the lack of relationship between lender and borrower, and failures to check people’s ability to pay; and, thirdly, the failures of world governments to regulate what is going on in investment banks.

The most interesting bits of his lecture were his three implications arising out of his Christian convictions.  Regrettably time was short, so these were little more than snapshots:

a.  Throughout Scripture debt is viewed as something that is problematic; e.g. laws about the land, debts and usury in the Pentateuch as well as the perspective of Proverbs 22:7 “The rich rule over the poor, and the borrower is slave to the lender”

b.  The cycles of economic life (upturn, downturn, boom, recession) need to be interpreted in the light the cyclical flow of the Sabbath, the jubilee provisions etc.  A good example is the Millennium commitments to the forgiveness of debts.  It is even more important that as we go into recession we hold to these commitments.

c.  Jesus says: You cannot serve God and Mammon (Mammon being the personification and deification of money).  Greed is not good – in fact, greed is the cause of excessive worry (according to Jesus in Matthew 6:24ff.).

As the financial crisis continues to deepen, it is good to be reminded of our commitment to care for the poor (and not renege on this as we feel the pinch) and the challenge to ensure that we love the Lord as our highest and best love, not the things of this world.

Wouldn’t it be good if Christian leaders faithfully teach the Kingdom standards set out in the Bible and help God’s people live wisely in testing times?

If probability taught that there was no God – would you stop worrying?

Apparently no one can bend it like Beckham, except, I guess a bendy bus with a message of false comfort sponsored by atheists: THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD. NOW STOP WORRYING AND ENJOY YOUR LIFE.

In The Independent (25th October) Howard Jacobson points out the false comfort which such an advert offers:

“As for the rest of the bendy bus message, it makes not a grain of sense. THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD STOP WORRYING? That’s a non sequitur. Why should the non-existence of a God stop us worrying? Who ever claimed it was belief in God that caused us to worry? Some of the least worried people I know are unworried precisely because they believe in a benign creator who takes individual care of them. We might think of them as deluded crackpots – we might be driven crazy ourselves by their baseless blitheness and serenity – but if not worrying is to be the measure of happiness then, like it or not, they’ve found happiness in spades. Ivan Karamazov on the other hand, is misery incarnate, unable to enjoy a moment of mental peace because he cannot see how, if God does not exist, anything can be deemed unlawful. SINCE THERE’S PROBABLY NO GOD it would say on the bendy bus Ivan hires to drive around St Petersburg, START WORRYING BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS PERMITTED”.

For my money, though, the pursuit of happiness seems inextricably intertwined with the pursuit of God.  For sure, for some, this has ended up in craziness and a fog of despair.  But when you consider that the God of the universe came in pursuit of us – “seeking and saving the lost”, as Jesus put it – we find that “holiness and happiness” are not that far apart.

Blaise Pascal wrote:

“All men seek happiness. There are no exceptions. However different the means they may employ, they all strive towards this goal… The will never takes the least step except to that end. This is the motive of every act of every man…

“Yet for very many years no one without faith has ever reached the goal at which everyone is continually aiming. All men complain: princes, subjects, nobles, commoners, old, young, strong, weak, learned, ignorant, healthy, sick, in every country, at every time, of all ages, and all conditions.

“A test which has gone on so long, without pause or change, really ought to convince us that we are incapable of attaining the good by our own efforts. But example teaches us very little. No two examples are so exactly alike that there is not some subtle difference, and that is what makes us expect that our expectations will not be disappointed this time as they were last time. So, while the present never satisfies us, experience deceives us, and leads us on from one misfortune to another until death comes as the ultimate and eternal climax.

“What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace? This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.

“God alone is man’s true good, and since man abandoned him it is a strange fact that nothing in nature has been found to take his place…” (#428)

Well said!